Sunday, March 13, 2011

New LYS and Why I'll Never be a Famous Knitter

I visited a new (to me) yarn store yesterday in Arlington called Yarn Heaven. It's a very nice shop, lots of room, loads of sock yarns (my favorite) and a sizable classroom in the back. The ladies there were friendly and helpful, and more than willing to answer questions and demonstrate things.

As a result, here's why I'll never be a famous knitter: I was mentioning that my back-and-forth gauge was different from my circular gauge and that I figured it's because I knit rather differently than I purl, and showed one of the ladies how I purl. Apparently, I'm doing it wrong, though I couldn't quite distinguish the subtle difference between what I'm doing and what she was trying so patiently to show me. She does wrap her yarn under her index finger rather than over like I do, but I just can't grasp doing it that way (no pun intended). I'm told that's often the fate of those who learn to knit from books and the web rather than from a person. I guess I'm just doomed to purling weird. I used to knit weird but I've since fixed that.

I do like Ann Budd's blog, though I must have skimmed through that one. All I gotta do now is figure out whether my purl or my knit stitch is the tighter. I'd say it's probably my purl stitch, but we'll see :-)

PS I was looking up images of people crocheting and they all wrap the yarn over the index finger. I learned to crochet from my grandmother many years before I learned to knit, so it's little wonder I can't work with it wrapped the other way. Avast ye purl monkeys!